An augmented virtual reality interface for assistive monitoring of smart spaces

In large scale surveillance applications, coherent presentation of data coming from myriad sensors becomes a problem. For example, tasks such as "locate an intruder" are no longer easy when the user is facing a room of monitors connected to hundreds of cameras. Therefore, there is a need for a system that allows the user to easily navigate the data space. Due to the scale of the application, such systems should also be robust with respect to hardware and software failures, as well as to varying bandwidth conditions. Our strategy is to first build software units that provide sensor abstractions (e.g., location of a person, noise level of a predefined region) to lessen the burden of dealing with individual sensors from the user. Second, we project this abstract sensor information into an augmented virtual reality interface for presentation to the user. The AVR interface offers a common medium to display abstract information constructed from multiple sensors, as well as allowing access to raw sensor information such as video streams, or a mixture of both. Also, the AVR interface can synthesize views not serviced by the physical cameras. The sensor abstraction and the smooth transition between sensors enable the user to intuitively navigate the data space. Further more, through this interface, the user can dynamically reconfigure the system resources. We will demonstrate three scenarios highlighting the above mentioned features.